Loosely based on Hieronymus Bosch's famous triptych, The garden of Earthly delights, MissYucki has created a new print work, City of Spooks and Delight. This characteristically MissYucki landscape illustrates, in 3 printed panels, a dreamscape of spooky delights in which a MissYucki Pageant Princess is the central character seen cavorting amidst shadowy creatures in a realm filled with curious candyfloss hues and almost familiar terrain sprinkled with symbols of Johannesburg, mining and eerie amusement.
City of Spooks and Delights is a digital, collaged illustration created using Photoshop. It's elements are a combination of digitally drawn details layered and textured with photographs. The work is comprised of three print panels; Bokkie Bliss, Golden Terra and Muti Mining. Together these panels form a mysterious and fantastical landscape reminiscent of Johannesburg and specifically symbols associated with Johannesburg's mining history, including mine dumps, headgears, gold, and other mineral treasures.
The landscape presents a magical and precarious mood, which disguises an undercurrent of angst with traces of cloying cute and deceptively delightful Pierneef like pastel composure. This characteristic synthesis of sweet and sickly
themes is integral to MissYucki's narrative and hints at notions of concealed secrets and otherworldliness. The childlike dreamscape also calls to mind invention and play and the characters fill the image, acting out a dreamlike fairytale of temptation.
The central panel, Golden Terra depicts a Pageant Princess figure in the company of muti monsters which flow towards her from the right Muti Mining panel, dripping and drooling their way out of a sinister darkness in a splattered hazy stain across the image, wooing her with delicious almost dangerous delights. She is seen surrounded by a sweep of golden sand, mine dumps and sparkles, she is poised in a state of ruptured alarm as she advances towards the beguiling glow and sweet promise of delight presented in the Bokkie Bliss panel.
The Muti Mining Panel depicts a peculiar, dark tone where amorphous muti creatures trudge beneath the earth in an inferno of mechanical, industrial - mining gloom. It is a scene where corrupt muti lurks, where treasure pilfering prevails and where a deep melancholy which; forms the heart of Spook is raised.
The Springbok is a significantly loaded symbol in South African culture and in the Bokkie Bliss panel the classic Bokkie is seen as a hybrid - rocking plaything perched precariously on the edge of a glimmering mine dump. The Bokkie is flirting with fear, uncertainty and peril. The setting holds a vague serenity but on closer inspection its blissful suggestions and sublime soft hued twinkle are signs of uncertainty and lures designed to seduce and entice. The Pageant Princess has indeed been enchanted by the influence of the Bokkie and one is left wondering if perilous playtime is blissful or terrifying.